I'm interested in what subroutine commenting practices people use. I'm not interested in figuring out which is the "best", just wonder methods others use...

When I create a module, before each private subroutine I put a comment like so: 

##
## user_address()
##
## Arguments:
##    $name: string  Name of the user
##    $phone: string Phone num of user
##
## Returns: string  Address of user
##
## Does a database check on the given user and returns
## the address.
##
sub user_address {
  #whatever
}

[download]

I always use empty parentheses on the top line, just to make it obvious from a glance that this block of comments documents a subroutine.

Also, whenever I have a subroutine that will be called from outside the module, I use POD, like so: 

=item population()
 
 Arguments:
    $country: string  Country code of country

 Returns: integer  Population of country

Given a country, returns the population.
=cut
sub population { ...

[download]

My question: what do you do? I've seen a few varying styles in CPAN documentation... is there one style that you've found particularily useful, and why?

stephen

In reply to Ways of commenting subroutines by stephen

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